DANCING ON MY OWN mixtape #6

Dancing on my own, playing air guitar. Have an awesome weekend, everyone!

Platform Groundmagazine presents Antje Peters

Groundmagazine is a platform for photographers, graphic designers and writers founded and edited by photographer Mieke Woestenburg. Issue #18 is dedicated to the talented Antje Peters and is definitely worth click click clicking through. Lorelinde Verhees wrote the accompanying text.

You can view Groundmagazine #18: Illusion here.

More on Antje Peters: http://www.antjepeters.com/
More on Mieke Woestenburg: http://www.miekewoestenburg.nl/
More on Lorelinde Verhees: http://www.lorelindeverhees.nl/

In praise of Lana

Hedwig van Driel wrote a piece for The Gallery of Cool on Queen Cool herself, Lana del Rey, whose music is featured in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.
 

A bevy of prestigious artists contributed to the soundtrack for The Great Gatsby. The xx. Florence and the Machine. Jay-Z, as well as Beyoncé. Bryan Ferry. Jack White. NPR made the entire thing available on their website for a while, and I was happy to take advantage of that (it can still be found on YouTube for now, in case you're curious).

The thing is, the song that's been stuck in my head for the past week isn't from any of these luminaries. No: it's the sensual, hypnotizing Young and Beautiful by the oft-mocked Lana del Rey.

It's easy enough to ridicule the self-styled “gangster Nancy Sinatra”. Her artificial persona is usually pointed out as a reason to dismiss her, but what pop culture icon nowadays does not have a meticulously crafted image? Perhaps, then, it is the specific persona she chose that bothers people, a strangely retro construction that harks back to a time long before grrl power or the cultivated strangeness of a Lady Gaga. “Lana del Rey” is a gorgeous, exquisitely bored rich girl singing about her “aching soul” without a trace of irony. It's music through an Instagram filter, if you want to be flip about it.  

Honestly, I'd rather distance myself from anything like that too. Listening to Del Rey's music doesn't fit my carefully cultivated image: I should be too cool and too intellectual to be so easily seduced by her languorous voice. When I heard she'd joined the hundreds who recorded covers of Leonard Cohen's music, my first impulse was to roll my eyes. But then I listened to her Chelsea Hotel #2, and I had to admit: damn, that's kind of beautiful.

It has to be said, too, that Lana del Rey was a perfect choice to record a song for the Gatsby soundtrack. She and Daisy Buchanan (played by Carey Mulligan in this new version, and by Mia Farrow in the Redford one) are practically the same. In Fitzgerald's novel, Daisy's voice is described as low and thrilling, and as “[...] full of money – that was the inexhaustable charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals, song of it... High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl.” You could use those same words to describe the allure of Del Rey's voice.

What's more, both are privileged white girls with all the money and beauty they could wish for, who are nonetheless restless and discontent. The layer of ennui may be skin deep, more an aesthetic choice than anything else. But if you happen to be in the mood to feel glamorously unhappy for an afternoon, nothing beats listening to Lana Del Rey's music – except, perhaps, re-reading The Great Gatsby.

Hedwig van Driel is a physicist by training but a cinephile at heart. She spends way too much time on the internet, and overthinking movies and television.

Read more from Hedwig on her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Dancing on My Own MIXTAPE #5

Summer is slowly, VERY SLOWLY, making its way to Holland. The fact that the sun is finally shining just might be the reason for this shamelessly cheerful mixtape in the Dancing on My Own series. We'll be humming Shiny Happy People all weekend, people!